MacBook Air (2017) review

Manufactured on the 14nm fabrication process, the 13-inch MacBook Air's Broadwell CPU is a die shrink of Intel's 22nm Haswell chip. It means better battery life versus last year's MacBook Air models, although the gains aren't on the same scale as the switch from Ivy Bridge to Haswell. Still, battery life was staggering, clocking up more than 13 hours when looping a 1080p video over Wi-Fi.

Benchmarks

• Cinebench R15 Single Core: 103cb cb; Multi Core: 255 cb
• Cinebench R15 OpenGL: 24.91fps
• Geek bench 3 Single Core: 2,873; Multi Core: 5,768
• Xbench (CPU and disk): 469.55
• NovaBench (Overall): 634; Graphics: 42
• Unigine Heaven 4.0 (Medium); FPS: 14.4; Overall: 438
• Blackmagic Disk Speed test: Write average: 612.4 Mbps; Read average: 1302.4 Mbps
• Battery, streaming 1080p video via Wi-Fi: 13 hours and 24 minutes

Broadwell brings performance gains too, even if they're nothing to shout about. The MacBook Air scored 5,768 on Geekbench 3's Multi Core CPU test, representing a 9% gain over the 13-inch Air from 2014. However, it proved 20% slower than the 2.7GHz Core i5 chip in the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina, which is to be expected considering that machine's faster clock speed.

Apple claims that the storage in the 2015 MacBook Air is twice as fast as the 2014 version – and that stands up. The MacBook Air averaged write speeds of 612.4 Mbps, and average read speeds of 1,243 Mbps, which gives the MacBook Air storage speeds comparable to the MacBook Pro for the first time.

The MacBook Pro with Retina's Iris Graphics 6100 proved 38% faster than the MacBook Air's HD Graphics 6000 in Unigine Heaven 4.0's benchmark. That said, Intel's decision to allocate die space to graphics on the CPU has been paying off for some time, and the MacBook Air is capable of playing a wide selection of games on low-medium settings with the resolution dialled down – especially when installed on a Windows partition using Boot Camp.

The MacBook Air pulled out 60 fps at 1,440 x 900 with the graphics on Medium, while Skyrim managed the high 50’s played at the same resolution with low graphics settings. However, if you intend to play some games with the MacBook Air, you’ll want to pick up one of the best gaming headsets, as the speakers here are tinny and unsatisfying. Apple managed to squeeze an impressive amount of low and mid-range tones into the 12-inch MacBook’s speakers, but the MacBook Air has yet to utilize this tech. 

If the MacBook Air’s consistency of design can start to get old, we’re happy that the keyboard remains unchanged on the 2015 MacBook Air. It’s slightly convex keys are the best we’ve ever used on a computer, and that includes the new Macbook, Lenovo’s ThinkPad notebooks and even Logitech’s well-regarded Mac keyboards. Even the MacBook Pro’s keys, which are pretty great, feel stiff in comparison. The keyboard is also backlit and easy to clean.

The MacBook Air's trackpad is just as impressive, providing a smooth gliding action that makes executing OS X's trackpad commands a breeze. It's just a shame that Apple didn't carry over the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Force Touch Trackpad – it's once again regular two-button clicking action for owners of Apple's slimmer machine.

Apple's decision to put a 480p camera in the 12-inch MacBook was a poor one, and thankfully it hasn't followed suited with the MacBook Air. At 720p it's up to the task of Skype and Google Hangout sessions, producing sufficiently clear and defined images.